Lacan at the Scene

What if Jacques Lacan -the brilliant and eccentric Parisian psychoanalyst- had worked as a police detective, applying his theories to solve crimes? This may conjure up a mental film clip starring Peter Sellers in a trench coat, but in Lacan at the Scene, Henry Bond makes a serious and provocative claim: that apparently impenetrable events of violent death can be more effectively unraveled with Lacan´s theory of psychoanalysis than with elaborate, technologically advanced forensic tools. Bond´s exposition on murder expands and develops a resolutely Zizekian approach. Seeking out radical and unexpected readings, Bond unpacks his material utilizing Lacan´s neurosis-psychosis-perversion grid. Bond places Lacan at the crime scene and builds his argument through a series of archival crime scene photographs from the 1950s -the period when Lacan was developing his influential theories. Bond takes us inside the perimeter set by police tape, guiding us into a series of explicit, even terrifying, murder scenes. It is not the horror of the ravished and mutilated corpses that draws his attention; instead, he interrogates seemingly minor details from the everyday, isolating and rephotographing what at first seems insignificant: a single high-heeled shoe on a kitchen table; carefully folded clothes placed over a chair; a plate of chocolate biscuits on a dinner table; lewd graffiti inscribed on a train carriage door; an arrangement of workman´s tools in a forest clearing. From these mundane details he carefully builds a robust and comprehensive manual for Lacanian crime investigation that can stand beside the FBI´s standard-issue Crime Classification Manual.